


kaleidoscope

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s04e03 Dancing Queen, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 21:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: She’s like one of those puzzles that Mick had as a kid, where you look down a tube and what you see changes: look at her from one angle, and she looks like Amaya. Look at her from another and she doesn’t.





	kaleidoscope

 

 

Mick sticks around for the first shift watching Charlie after Ray leaves. It’s only supposed to be a short one, with Zari taking over after a few hours. It’s not that he has any particular interest in looking after their fugitive –he is _not_ calling them mythteries, no matter how many disappointed looks Ray gives him – but that he doesn’t have any plans.

 

Without Amaya or Nate or even Wally, half of Mick’s loose schedule has completely fallen apart. There’s no Amaya to regale the team with tales Zambesi or her time with the JSA, no Nate to run his mouth off about history until the early hours of the morning, and no Wally wanting to beat his record at doing something. Jax had always been a safe bet for someone to spend the evening with, even if they’d usually consisted of Mick pretending that he didn’t know anything about the Waverider while Jax usually fixed something, tested something, or went over how to do one of those. Even the professor—

 

Mick shakes his head. No point in going there. The professor’s dead and gone, just like Snart, and thinking about how he was usually up in the middle of the night for some reason or another won’t bring him back.

 

“Are you going to sit there all night? You could at least give me a bottle of that beer if you’re going to stare at me.” Charlie gives the containment field a half-hearted kick. She spent the last hour walking around the edge of it, occasionally prodding at it with the tip of her finger.

 

He considers not giving her anything. Technically, he’s not supposed to give her anything or do anything, Sara’s orders, but the weasel said the same thing and Mick hates the idea of listening to him. So he grabs a bottle of the beer – checks it’s the coldest one there – and enters the room.

 

Charlie glares at him as he approaches.

 

“Who are you, anyway? You and the arsehole who took away my powers are the only ones who haven’t introduced yourselves yet.”

 

“Mick.” The weasel can introduce himself if he ever gets off his ass and decides to do it.

 

“Well, Mick, at least somebody around here has manners. Unless you’re afraid I’m going to bite you if you put your fingers in my cage.”

 

“Don’t shock me,” he says, more to let Charlie know that even if he’s guarding her alone, he’s got some form of back-up. Not that she can do anything. Trench Coat did clip her wings, and every so often she keeps looking at herself in reflective surfaces and looking pained, so he definitely did manage it, instead of fucking it up or her letting them believe it worked.

 

“Of course not, Mr Rory,” is Gideon’s reply as he passes the bottle through the containment field and holds it out to Charlie.

 

Charlie glances up towards the ceiling before she reaches for the bottle.

 

She’s like one of those puzzles that Mick had as a kid, where you look down a tube and what you see changes: look at her from one angle, and she looks like Amaya. Look at her from another and she doesn’t. Skin deep, she’s Amaya, but beyond that… It’s the way she smirks as Mick withdraws his hand from the containment field, the way she drops down on to the step with a sigh, the slouch she relaxes into, even the way she touches the toe of one of the boots to the containment field to push the boundaries and make it light up. It’s unsettling. _She’s_ unsettling.

 

“Is this the part where you spill your guts about how much you loved her? You wouldn’t believe how often people do that when they find out I’m not the real one. It’s that or hate me for being a shapeshifter.” Charlie studies him over the mouth of the bottle and picks at the label.

 

Against his better judgement, Mick sits down about three feet away from the other side of the field. “I didn’t love her.” Not like that, at least. Amaya was – still is, really – his friend, one of the closest ones he’s had.

 

“Then why are you the first one to come anywhere near me since you all shut me in here? Sympathy for the devil then? Or sympathy for another ex-prisoner?” she asks. There’s something sharp in the smile his surprise earns him. For a second, she looks nothing like Amaya and everything like someone he should avoid. “Don’t look so surprised, _Mick_. You learn a few things trapped in a prison like that. Did Ray tell you what I was in for?”

 

“Being different.” Mick’s not entirely convinced of that – he’s met a lot of people who said that they did absolutely nothing wrong to end up in Iron Heights one, two, three, four times and most of them had been lying their asses off. Maybe Charlie’s one of them and she lies because she didn’t think that Ray would help her if he knew what she’d done. Mick’s known a lot of people like that. Or maybe she’s one of the ones who was really in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

It doesn’t really matter anymore. Criminal, Boy Scout, historian, assassin, scientist. They all ended up in the same place in the end.

 

“And what were you in for?”

 

“Arson. Or at least that’s what they managed to get me on.” He holds his bottle up in a parody of a toast and she mirrors him.

 

Charlie nods, and they sit in silence for a few minutes as she finishes off her beer. Mick tries not to watch her too closely even if he keeps catching her watching him as well. It feels wrong to be searching for the moments when she looks nothing like Amaya. It feels worse to see the moments when she does actually look like she could be Amaya, though.

 

“What’s an arsonist doing with this lot?” she asks as soon as she puts the empty bottle down. “No offense, but you’re more the punk type than the creature catcher type.”

 

“They’re my friends.” The only things left in the world that Mick even gives a damn about. Snart’s dead and gone, and Lisa’s never going to forgive him for that. His parents have been dead for decades. Most of his old friends are in Iron Heights or who knows where. The Legends… The Waverider is his home, and the Legends are his family.

 

“They didn’t try to send you to hell? Or – kill you?” She shrugs. “I guess that’s the version they should use on someone who isn’t magical.”

 

“No. Believe me, it would have been payback for me trying to kill them.” Leonard had, but he hadn’t been able to do it. When Mick had come back as Chronos, they’d simply locked him up. Like they’d done with Charlie because they couldn’t kill her. Can’t kill her. It’s not even that she has Amaya’s face. If Ray’s right, and she isn’t secretly an evil monster who’s going to go on a killing spree or start World War III, or even if she _was_ but isn’t now… They can’t kill her. Maybe she’s innocent and maybe she isn’t, but Mick doesn’t like the idea of killing her.

 

Charlie tilts her chin up. “I’m not really magical now, thanks to your magician.”

 

She touches her fingers to the forcefield again, all the anger melting away as she stares at her reflection in the glass walls. Amaya’s reflection. If she has her own face, instead of a borrowed one, she can’t get it back. Ray had told them that she’d picked the last one for the smile. Part of Mick wonders if she’d have chosen Amaya for her morals if she’d known she’d end up stuck as her. Maybe it means something, as much as anything on this ship ever does.

 

“He took away what I am. Who I am.”

 

That’s familiar. Mick remembers resenting the Legends for wanting him to be a hero. Hating Snart for turning his back on being a criminal to side with them. Hating the Time Masters for the way they wanted to strip away that made him _him_. Hating Snart for leaving him instead of killing him. Hating himself when he realised he was changing.

 

“Maybe you’re stuck looking like Amaya, but you’re the one who decides who you are. You’re not Amaya and you don’t have to be. Be Charlie. Be who you are under their faces. That’s what you told Haitcut, wasn’t it? You hold on to what you believe in.”

 

“Strong drinks, loud music, and screwing the system.” Her smile doesn’t look like a threat this time, but it’s somehow even more dangerous, in a way that Amaya’s never was. She rolls the empty bottle right up to the bottom of the containment field. “Your beer tastes like cat piss, by the way.”

 

Mick’s reaching to get the bottle, about to tell Charlie that he can’t even taste it after the first bottle, when the door slides open and Zari wanders in, a plate of food in one hand, a tablet in the other. Mick stops, his hand halfway to the containment field. Gideon must decide to be nice because when Charlie gives it a tentative push against the field, the bottle rolls right through it and hits his hand.  

 

There’s no real reason to hide it. It’s not as if he’s doing anything wrong. Sara didn’t say a damn word about listening to Trench Coat. But, still. Plausible deniability.

 

Zari looks at Charlie for a few seconds too long before she lets her gaze slide away. Charlie rolls her eyes.

 

“Sorry, I fell asleep, and then Ray wouldn’t stop talking about everything Gideon told him about tattoo care. He isn’t getting it removed, he says it represents… something I wasn’t listening to. I still wish it was a tramp stamp, though. That would have been very funny. I still can’t believe it’s a corgi with a mohawk.”

 

“Haircut had to get something stupid or he wouldn’t be Haircut,” Mick says, getting to his feet, bottles in hand.

 

“Did you give her a drink?”

 

Mick’s not sure if she looks amused or if she’s going to rat him out to Trench Coat, so he says, “Why would I do that? They’re both mine.”

 

“Of course they are.” Zari settles down close to the wall with her tablet, already getting back to whatever she’s been doing all evening, probably using it as a way to keep herself from staring at Charlie. “You’re back here in eighteen hours. Ray’s up after me, then it’s Sara. Don’t forget because I don’t want Gideon to wake everyone up trying to wake you.”

 

“I’ll set an alarm.” Get Gideon to set an alarm. Whatever. Either way, he’ll be here when he has to be.

 

Charlie catches Mick’s eye just as he begins to turn away and winks.


End file.
